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Washington Post Column on Lance by Sally Jenkins

Sally Jenkins is a Washington Post columnist and wrote Lance’s books, It’s Not About the Bike and Every Second Counts. She wrote a column on Saturday in the Washington Post titled, Why I’m not angry at Lance Armstrong. With those qualifications, you’d think she would be something special, but no, she’s a complete tool. Here is the link, you should read it and then read the following rebuttals.

I would love to rip Sally, but I don’t have the intellectual ability to do it anywhere nearly as good as the following. One is here at A Twisted Spoke. This pretty much sums up just about everything I was thinking as I was reading the original article. Or you can read David Walsh’s response here.

I have a hard time believing that the Washington Post would print something so misleading and generally one sided as this. They lost a bunch of credibility in my opinion. There must be some behind the scenes political stuff going on. Whatever the reason, it goes to show that you shouldn’t give credence to everything you read in reputable newspapers.

Well, I can say one thing for her. Once Sally Jenkins make a friend, she is a friend for life and will overlook nearly everything that was the basis of the friendship originally. I’m not sure if that makes her just gullible or just ignorant. Either way, I don’t want her to be writing columns for the Washington Post in the future.

I actually left a comment at the Washington Post’s site, which is something I never do.

Here is a CSPAN video of her. I didn’t watch it. I really have no desire to hear anything she has to say about much of anything.

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27 thoughts on “Washington Post Column on Lance by Sally Jenkins”

Ok….So I read the article. Twice. My reaction is “REALLY”?!?!?! She purports to be a journalist and therefor, we assume, a seeker of truth. Yet she has supported and defended a lie. A lie of, dare I say, EPIC proportions.
There is so much to comment on but the thing that strikes me most is the bit about Lance being born and raised by a “checkout girl” and whose life options were, seemingly, limited to sports and to be successful in the ONE thing for which he had talent, he was forced to break the law and encourage others to break the law to enable him to succeed. Hmmm? By that logic she is giving a pass to nearly all children born into less than desirable circumstances and following a life of criminal activity in order to become successful. There are scads of drug traffickers who have contributed money to the benefit of others. That doesn’t make them less than the criminal they are. Why does Lance get a pass?

What’s unrolling now has been quite obvious for years if you did know what to look at. If LA was such an extra ordinary talent why did he quit right after the Tour almost every year? Why not ride on till the end of the season. This always bothered me somehow. And that heartbreaking cadence he was spinning. Try to go at 110 RPM for a while even in easy gears and see how it feels. But I disagree that he destroyed the sport. He made the sport. The sport was already destroyed by all sketchy Belgians and Italians. He made it global and brought the big money into it. W/o him I seriously doubt cycling would ever get as big as it is now. Especially in US and outside Europe in general. Sally Jenkins on the other hand is a completely different species of fish. At best completely insignificant.

Poor Sally had to deal with Mr. Lance Armstrong, both Texan’s…Lance had her under control..the poor woman had no chance to escape or journalistically search for more..maybe the truth. She dealt with Mr. Cold Blood..hard to escape his grip and his demand. Lance was proabably tougher in his days as gangster boss than Al Capone…..
Frohe Weihnachten wuenscht Bernd

I think most of you are missing the point. 99.9% people DON’T CARE about bicycle racing!! There I said it…. It is only you bike geeks that live and breathe bikes all day everyday that get worked up about Lance. NOBODY ELSE CARES!!

Talk to the general public about this and they could care less about bike race wins or PED’s. They associate Lance with cancer awareness and the battle with cancer. The public could not even tell you how many Tours he won or half of his sponsors or teams.

Hiring or accepting rapist, and violent criminals to your baseball, football, basketball teams is way bigger than the story of 99% of an entire peleton using PED’s.

They are way bigger and more important things in life than racing bicycles around the Midwest.

Steve – I found it interesting to see your comment at the Wa Po suggesting that “Ms. Jenkins needs to keep quiet in the future” and compare/contrast it with one of your reader’s comments responding to a recent post of yours concerning guns. The reader basically said that you should shut up about guns and stick to what you know about. I thought that reader’s comment was ridiculous – it is your blog after all, and no one is forcing him to read it. Perhaps it is upsetting to him that (I’m hypothesizing here) someone whose viewpoints he respects regarding cycling can hold such a different opinion about a different topic. Is he concerned that people considering gun arguments will give your opinion undue weight just because you are a smart cyclist? With regard to Ms. Jenkins, I feel that she can say whatever she wants, but perhaps it is more of an issue of how the Wa Po presents her writing (and whether they chose to publish her in the future). If I were an editor there, perhaps I would have followed her piece with a note that her writing represents her own opinions and not necessarily those of the paper, it’s editorial board, etc.

Unrelated to any particular topic, thanks for publishing this blog – I enjoy hearing your take on things and reading about your experiences.

Paul-There is a huge difference between me writing my opinions here at my site and the Washington Post printing one sided, misleading columns. The general public doesn’t come here, friends do. It only reflects upon me what I write. I have no problem if Ms. Jenkins writes about her relationship with Lance on her personal website. I have a problem with it when she uses her position at the Washington Post to do it.

So what r u doin here, Jimbo? Wastin your precious time commenting a blog post on a topic that has, according to u, close to no significance what so ever to anyone at all… I’m just curious, as we cyclist r in general. That’s why we like to ride around and look at things, u know.

Jimbo-You are wrong here. The reason that the Washington Post printed the column because it was of significance to the general public. They aren’t printing an article on joe blow high school student that is was caught taking drugs. They printed it because they thought their readership would be interested in the topic. They are in the business of selling their product and thought the column would do just that.

So Jimbo you still have not answered the question if ” nobody” but cyclists care about this story, why are you here? I assume that you are not a cyclist and therefore have invalidated your own comment. And why are making this point on a blog for cyclists?

I think by bringing the really big money into the sport he has had a part in damaging the sport for me anyway. He brought the money in a very unsustainable way by deciept. So yes, he got the sport way off the ground and then crashed it himself.

I have read her article, and fail to find what angers you about it. She didn’t say anything that wasn’t true, and she really didn’t defend him. She defended her beliefs. And exactly what’s wrong with that. The only thing that Lance could do, that would make me feel better, is to admit what went on. But i’m also not stupid. I know he has far too much to lose, for that to happen. And I still believe, that Lance doesn’t feel like he cheated anyone. Almost the entire peloton was cheating, so he doesn’t feel like what he did was wrong. He trained harder than anyone, and therefore got more out of cheating. Any of his main competitors could have done that. It’s their own fault they didn’t. If Ullrich had trained as hard as Lance, Lance wouldn’t have won 7 Tours. One man isn’t responsible for doping in cycling. And the doping was going on, long before Lance arrived. I’m just not sure why all of you, are so outraged about Lance. Plenty of people cheated, and were as big of bullies as Lance. I don’t here you screaming for their heads. Equality on this subject, would be refreshing.

“Another thing you’ve got to remember about Capone is that he didn’t spring out of a vacuum. The Capone gang was actually a public utility; it supplied what the people wanted and demanded. The man in the street wanted girls: Capone gave him girls. He wanted booze during Prohibition: Capone gave him booze. He wanted to bet on a horse: Capone let him bet. It all operated according to the old laws of supply and demand, and if there weren’t people who wanted the services provided by the gangsters, the gangsters wouldn’t be in business. Everybody owned stock in the Capone mob; in a way, he was a public benefactor. I remember one time when he arrived at his box seat in Dyche Stadium for a Northwestern football game on Boy Scout Day and 8000 scouts got up in the stands and screamed in cadence, “Yea, yea, Big Al. Yea, yea, Big Al.” Capone didn’t create the corruption, he just grew fat on it, as did the political parties, the police and the overall municipal economy.” http://www.progress.org/2003/alinsky6.htm

The same goes for Lance and his ghostwriter – they’re providing inspiration and entertainment. The indelicate details, people just don’t care about. They never knew anything about bike racing before Lance, and didn’t care, and now they’ll go back to watching pro wrestling or whatever.

Oh, but Bob was with Lance in the mountains of North Carolina and inspired him to stick with his comeback from cancer and go for a Tour de France win in 1999. At that time, Lance was getting shelled out the back of the Euro pro peloton but after training with Bob, went on to place in the top 5 in the Vuelta. Bob’s got nothing to say I’m sure.

Bob was the inspiration and Chris Carmichael supplied the coaching know-how for the greatest comeback in athletic history. No apologies necessary.

Numero uno, Jenkins wasn’t Armstrong’s ghost writer, she’s credited on the cover as being one of the authors.

Two, while Armstrong and many others cheated by using PEDs, the riders that didn’t cheat, if indeed there were any, are just as guilty as the dopers by competing in a contest and thus enhancing its credibility, when they had to have known that the races were dominated by dopers. None of the supposedly clean riders were required to compete, they could have ridden in some more legitimate format.

Third, what’s admitting the deal got to do with anything? Would everybody be happier with some sort of phony contrition and penance?

Last, Jenkins without a doubt has more personal knowledge of Armstrong than any of the commenters on this blog, whose opinions on this matter have also been formed by the media, just from a different source.

My comment elsewhere :
” Seems to me that ” poor sally ” has realised that she has become invisible . Wapost lacking audience , decided to give her a podium to preach from and now , look at the results , she has achieved ? ” The Post sees the clicks and attention it generates. Cash. That’s the bottom line. The more we pay attention to her the more site visits they get. It’s good business “! No longer un noticed , people will be awaiting her next effort of ” foot in mouth ” disease ! Will it be a opinion post on ” phat in fire ” or heinous on his ” never,never,never”? Certainly she will not be aligning herself with http://www.changecyclingnow.org Petition since she would be unable to discern the difference between fact & fiction as published by those UCI people that were buddies with her friend Lance !